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# <center>I had landed in Hong Kong with a 6 month open plane ticket!</center>

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The place I had pre-booked to sleep in was awful too. The room was so small you could not swing a cat around in it. 
The tiny window was 7 feet up in the air, and looked out onto the next building 12 inches away!
There was a Somalian man at the reception which was outside everyone's room, and he spent all day and most of the night arguing on the phone with relatives. He was impossible to escape.
The entry to this hell hole was also a very disorganized shopping center on the ground floor. Every time you left or got back you had to push your way past hundreds of people just to get to the lift. I hated the first 10 days in HK.
When I did get outside of the building I was hassled everywhere I walked, people trying to sell me purses, watches, suits, handbags the lot! This was mainland HK, and not a fun place to be.

I decided to get out of dodge and booked a 6 month open ticket to Thailand on my laptop. I let the receptionist keep my remaining 4 days room money. On the way to this hole of a building, I had also been ripped off by a taxi driver that demanded £50 for the short trip from the airport, so I decided to take the bus to the airport to depart. Whilst sitting on this bus I held up my passport and my plane ticket to look at them, and then it happened - I met the one they named Gary.

G as I shall call him from now on tapped me on the shoulder from behind. "Are you going to Thailand" asked G. As this was the airport shuttle bus it seemed like a normal sort of question, after all he had heard me speak English when I got on too. Yes I replied, Pattaya he asked, yes I replied. G decided to shuffle forward and sit next to me, I came to find out this was totally normal in G's world, thrusting himself on others.

"Want to share a taxi to Pattaya then" he asked whilst spitting his name out at the same time. After we compared flights, and arrival times, I agreed as there was only 10 minutes waiting on either side. At the Airport in Bangkok another Brit asked if he could share our cab and the cost, we both agreed and 2 hours 30 minutes later we arrived in Pattaya. I never even got to know the other guys name, the one in the cab, as G talked for the entire journey about his life!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Where are you staying at" G asked when I took my suitcase out of the boot at the Siam Sawasdee hotel in Soi Boukaw Pattaya. If they have a room here I said. Great he replied, lets go and ask inside. The other guy had vanished as quick as he had got in the car in Bangkok.

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They had plenty of rooms, so I booked a room for 5 days, so did G. By the time those days were up, G who I had hardly seen for those days turned up at my room and told me he had found a much bigger couple of rooms that we could rent for a month over the road. I went and checked out what would be my room for the month, agreed a price and so did G with his room.

It was Christmas time, and I had planned to spend just over 1 month here, then stick my finger on the map of Asia to decide my next destination. When the finger moment arrived in early January I closed my eyes and planted it firmly on Bali, so Bali it was.

In that month I spent a lot of nights partying with G, we did fireworks in the road new years eve, well I did anyway, just off Soi 8. I could take G's company for around 2 to 3 days, then would need as long of a break from him. He had this annoying habit with regards to joining in strangers conversations, that annoyed a lot of tourists and the natives. G came back one night and knocked my door, to ask me to look at his drunken skull. A Thai lady had taken offense whilst buying shoes, he was trying to tell her which pair to buy at 4 am, so she hit him on the head with a stiletto heel. I had to mop up the blood.

Back to the finger. When I did the finger and Bali, G decided he would also like to go. Not only did G come and annoy the shit out of me in Bali, he managed it in Singapore too, then in Bangkok part 2. I managed to get rid of G in that 2 week stay on the main drag in Bangkok, as he wanted us to go to the Philippines, and I had decided before hand that I need a better stay over in Hong Kong, to refresh my memories, erase the first trip, and get a better tasting pill to remember the place by.

After shedding myself of the G man, I stopped in HK again, this time in a beautiful hotel on the island, away from mainland HK. It was the pill I required, I had a superb 2 weeks on the island, and loved every minute of it. It was also all the more sweet not having to babysit a 40 something year old trouble finder.

I will get back to part 2, Bali, Singapore and the rest, then you can make your own mind up about our G man, he even found me on Facebook, back in the day that I was still on there, I deleted my account!......

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@shepz1 drops the keyboard on his foot, buggers off for something to eat, and wishes you well!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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<center>Images Pixaby.</center>